Also, its worthless to try and prove either side. I cant prove it wasnt changed, but you cant prove it was. Its like God, i cant prove he is there, but you can prove he isnt. Its worthless trying. The only thing i can do is, considering you people say the KJV is a true translation, is to compare the KJV with my NCV. I have both, and i have compared verses, and they were pretty much the same.

Luke is wrong about not being able to prove or disprove the unchanged nature of the Bible. It has not changed. There are less than 5% discrepancies in the original texts that we have. And those differences are not important differences. Rather, they are minor changes in the wording or phrasing of certain passages that keep the overall meaning the same.

Likewise, the modern translations are very similar. As for Cosmos Jack's assertion that none of them are accurate because they aren't the same, that's a load of crud. There are different ways of translating the same text. He has obviously studied any other language, for if he had, he would be less of a dolt. (Sorry for the slight flame, but I'm getting irritated.) Anyone who has studied another language knows that there are certain phrases that do not translate exactly. Moreover, the older the language, the more likely it is that there will be such difficulties. Okay, now we're talking a minimum of around 1700 years difference. That means that there are different ways of translating the same passages. The meaning remains the same. The word choice or exact phrasing may be different, but that is all.

The validity of the Bible may be questioned, but not on the basis of its accuracy to the original manuscripts. That is without question.

I would describe any 'alterations' or 'discrepencies' of the gospels as minor. (From what i know of them at least)

Whether they are important or not - hmm - well, that's an interesting question.

If your viewing the Bible objectively as a historical document, then yes, almost certainly most, if not all alterations or discrepensies are of no real, earth-shattering merit.

...BUT - if your view is that EVERY SINGLE WORD in the Bible is absolutely 'divine' and ultimately 'true', then I would say the discrepencies are at the very least 'worthy of note' - and require attention.

...at the very least you have to admit discrepancies exist!!

A prefectly vaid counter to this point, however, is that although individual words or phrases may have been altered, the original meaning and message was not altered in any way.

I accept this point - although I reserve the right to question this point if and when a specific 'alteration' is referenced...

Let me make this VERY clear - many Christians here don't need to take heed of this post, or take offense - cos they already know and accept this...

...BUT - if your view is that EVERY SINGLE WORD in the Bible is absolutely 'divine' and ultimately 'true', then I would say the discrepencies are at the very least 'worthy of note' - and require attention.

...at the very least you have to admit discrepancies exist!!

YEah, i believe its all true, but i said like a month ago about the discrepancies in the "why is it OK to bash christianity thread?" or some other thread. I said the book of Isaiah (when compared to the dead sea scrolls) had about 40 errors, mostly punctuation, or just words changing over time. The other thing changed was, they found the word LIGHT somewhere in the book....

to quote me: (eeerrr... that website that i quoted a while back, which i posted)

Quote:

What about the Old Testament? Until 1947 the Old Testament was considered to be no more reliable than other books of antiquity. There was no scholarly basis to believe that the documents were essentially the same as those which were originally written - until the spring of 1947, when a young shepherd boy named Mohammed was out looking for a lost goat just on the west bank of the Dead Sea about eight miles south of Jericho. He came to a crevice in the rock. Not wanting to take the effort to crawl down in it to see if his goat was there, he took a large stone and threw it into the crevice. He heard the sound of shattering pottery. He climbed down into the crevice and discovered what is considered to be the most significant and remarkable find of antiquity. Down there were a number of huge clay pots which had been sealed perfectly. They had been untouched. In those pots were thousands - 40,000 fragments of literature from antiquity. One of them, the most complete, was a manuscript of the book of Isaiah. It was on a leather scroll that was 24 feet long and 10 inches high. The materials were sold to a Jewish scholar from the Hebrew University there in Jerusalem. With great interest it was shared with the literary world. The previously oldest manuscript of the book of Isaiah which existed prior to these scrolls, which have now been called the Dead Sea Scrolls, was from 900 A.D. Paleographers have dated the Dead Sea Scrolls at between 100 B.C. and 200 B.C. The scroll for Isaiah was dated at 125 B.C.

This forms a wonderful opportunity to compare textural corruption over what amounts to 1,025 years. Scholars immediately went to work to compare these two books to see what differences there might be between them. Would you like to know the results of that find? We'll take one chapter for an example - Isaiah 53. This chapter has 166 words. Comparing the two manuscripts, 1,025 years apart, there are 17 letters that are different. Ten of the letters are spelling, simply because over time, words change their spelling. Four of the letters are stylistic - punctuation and things of this kind. Three of the letters create the word "light," which was added in verse 11. So what you essentially have is that, over a period of more than a millenium, the addition of one word, "light" in verse 11, makes no change in the meaning of the verse whatsoever.

I got this whole thing from another site like 3 days before you joined the senate, so i dont think you would have read it.